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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Mission Statement

Kreedaa Kaushalya is a passion project of our art foundation 'Ramsons Kala Pratishtana'. The main objective of this foundation is to promote craft forms. So, while working on this passion project, we have brought together two diverse traditions - Board Game Tradition and Craft Tradition.

We have identified about 35 craft clusters across India like Mysore, Bangalore, Channapatna, Sri Kalahasti, Solapur, Navalgund, Shantiniketan, Varanasi, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Etikoppaka, etc. We have hand picked best-suited craftspersons for our work and extensively worked with them, first to understand their craft form completely so that we can speak with them in their own craft language (each craft form can be seen as a language and as languages differ from each other, so do craft forms) and later we provide them with our designs which were developed by designers of our art foundation.

Developing any product anew is a long drawn and time consuming process. Time consumed is directly proportional to remoteness of the craft cluster. After a considerable time a product is developed successfully. For every successful product created, there is one failure.

In spite of all these we do not want to go in for mass produced board games like those that are printed on paper or screen printing on cloth or canvas and plastic counters. Whatever product we develop, we ensure that it is a hand crafted one.

Contributors

Welcome

Dear reader, welcome, we are glad to have you here. As the text in the banner says, this blog is a window into the world of traditional board games of India. We are a team of three - R.G. Singh, Raghu Dharmendra and Dr. C.R. Dileep Kumar Gowda - who go around and visit towns, villages, temples, etc., and gather information on board games in our own way and document them.

This blog contains some titbits, stories, game rules, etc., which we found, encountered and experienced during our field trips. Please feel free to comment. We would be glad to answer any of your queries or doubts. If there are any mistakes please bring it to our knowledge. Thank you. Enjoy reading.

Note:Few of the board games featured here are available at 'Ramsons' the largest handicraft shop of Mysuru. The shop is right in front of Zoo (Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens) a famous tourist destination in Mysuru.

Contact: +91-821-2443669 or +91-9880111625

Email: ramsonsmysore@yahoo.com

Appeal

An appeal from Ramsons Kala Pratishtana to all Indian board game lovers.

We would be glad to receive for our Indian Board Game Archive any information about any games from anyone. Local names of the games, customs, traditions, victory rituals, victory songs, local rules, variation of rules, unusual experiences, photographs, anything.

Also, we are trying to put together as full a collection as possible of specimens of these games, to be preserved, for good, for the future together with rules and other information, since many old games are threatened with possible extinction due to computer games, video games and the generally changing world.

Finally, if you have old games, boards, dice, pieces that you don't want any more or that are never used any more, you can donate such material to our art foundation where they will be conserved and preserved for posterity.